Thread: Obama Picks Latino Advisors

Obama picks Latino advisors

By Eunice Moscoso | Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 05:05 PM

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign, which is spending $20 million to reach Latino voters, announced this week the creation of a National Latino Advisory Council.

The chair of the group is Federico Pena, who served as Secretary of Transportation in the Clinton Administration and is also a former mayor of Denver.

Another member of the council is Rep. Luis Gutierrez, an Illinois Democrat who authored an immigration bill that would have given illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

Gutierrez is known as a champion of immigrant rights.

The council also includes some high profile members of labor unions including Geoconda Arguello-Kline, president of the Nevada Culinary Workers Union and Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union.

In a press release, the Obama campaign said that the council is “made up of key labor, faith, community leaders, and elected officials from across the country and will serve as an advisory council for the campaign on issues important to the Latino community.â€

Villaraigosa and Bill Richardson were NOT included!

Are Latinos more important than other Americans. I thought that all of our laws were to benefit AMERCIANS of all races Isn't the treatment of one race over another racisim and predjudicial? Why is it necessary to have Latio advisors?

Obama forms advisory group focused on Latinos

Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

(08-19) 17:20 PDT -- Sen. Barack Obama moved this week to bolster his edge over Sen. John McCain in courting Latino voters, announcing a national Latino advisory council with heavyweights including Henry Cisneros, housing secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Clinton transportation secretary Federico Peña.

The move follows Obama's announcement last month that he would spend an unprecedented $20 million to woo Latino votes - more than twice the $8 million spent by both parties in 2004. His efforts are mirrored by McCain's outreach, especially with Latino military families and Cuban American voters, though the Arizona senator's staff declined to say how much money his campaign would devote.

"It's funny, they announced they'll spend $20 million reaching out to Hispanic voters but when you go to Florida, the only Spanish ads are by John McCain," said McCain spokeswoman Hessy Fernandez. "At the end of the day, John McCain doesn't need an introduction with the Latino community. He has been working for more than two decades on the values, principles and issues Latino voters care about."

McCain's campaign has created Latino "leadership teams" in several states, including California. His Spanish-language Web site touts endorsements from several south Florida Hispanic Republicans, including Sen. Mel Martinez.

The Obama campaign plans to combine Latino-oriented advertising with outreach by high-profile Latino "surrogates" and aggressive field operations to mobilize Hispanic voters in closely contested states, especially Florida, Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico.

"The interesting thing about these swing states in the Southwest is that they're swing and the Latino vote is very strong," said Obama adviser Maria Blanco, who directs the Earl Warren Institute at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. "It could make a difference."

Word of Obama's Latino advisory council set political analysts buzzing over what names were not on the list and raised questions about lingering tensions between the Obama campaign and some Latino leaders who had backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid and helped turn out millions of Hispanic primary voters for her.

Cisneros and several other prominent Latinos who backed Clinton are now on the Obama advisory council. Others are notably absent, including Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and United Farm Workers co-founder Dolores Huerta. Also not listed is New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who endorsed Obama over Clinton.

An Obama spokesman emphasized that Richardson and Villaraigosa are both actively stumping for the Democratic candidate and have top level access within the campaign. The group of 15 advisers was chosen for its geographic diversity and will serve as a sounding board inside the campaign on how best to address Latino voters, said spokesman Vince Casillas.

But a sense of sour grapes appears to linger for some established Latino leaders who were active Clinton backers who met with Obama in Washington's Mayflower Hotel, shortly after she conceded in May.

"If I've spoken to 10 major people (who were at the meeting), nine of them, even up until mid-July were still unhappy with Latino access and status within the Obama campaign and his outreach," said David Ayón, a senior research associate at the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University and a close observer of Latino political affairs. "The relationship has been riddled with problems."

Yet if the country's Latino Democratic leadership is divided over Obama, polls show Latino voters favor him by wide margins. A nationwide survey conducted in July by the Pew Hispanic Center showed Obama leading McCain 66 percent to 23 percent among Hispanic registered voters.

Latinos have turned out in growing numbers in recent years, with 8 to 10 million expected to vote this November.

The presidential election is likely to be decided by voters in a handful of battleground states - Latinos wield increasing electoral clout in several - and that's where the campaigns are expected to pour the most resources.

McCain must reach beyond Latino business leaders in the Southwest to churches and other groups of Latino voters, according to UC Irvine political science Professor Louis DeSipio.

"So far as I can tell, he hasn't established that layer of his outreach yet," he said. "Can he get by without Latinos in Nevada? Probably. But he can't get by without Latinos in New Mexico."

McCain's greatest Hispanic strength, outside his home state of Arizona, may be in Florida, where Cuban Americans are traditionally Republican. To compete with McCain's base in Miami, Obama has been mobilizing new Latino voters in the Orlando area, much as Democrats did in 2000, said DeSipio.


E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks@sfchronicle.com.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... e=politics

When is Obama going to realize that latinos will NOT deliver him to the oval office? Less than 7% of the voters and we don't all think or vote alike.

One group and one group only will pick the next POTUS and that group is AMERICAN VOTERS.

Originally Posted by agrneydgrl

Are Latinos more important than other Americans. I thought that all of our laws were to benefit AMERCIANS of all races Isn't the treatment of one race over another racisim and predjudicial? Why is it necessary to have Latio advisors?

ObamaSnob would do better to have a team of Caucasian advisers, since the legal, voting base of America is mostly this group. He can't see the forrst for the trees.

Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign, which is spending $20 million to reach Latino voters, announced this week the creation of a National Latino Advisory Council

Great! Just what this country needs is another "advisory council" which focuses exclusively on hispanics, which no doubt, will further divide this country! I thought Obama was smarter than that with his Ivy league pedigree and what not! Goes to show you that you can have a Ive League education and still be ignorant.

How many special interests groups do hispancs need for God sakes!!